When the Big One hits L.A. or the next terrorist strike slams Manhattan, The Post will publish riveting "reaction stories" quoting the old dudes at the Holocaust Museum and Harry Reid.
They aren't? Well, they used to be! Great work, Marcus Brauchli! In just one year you've turned the Washington Post into a local paper. Ben Bradlee must be so proud.
How sad it is that he utterly misses the point of the service local bureaus render: that they provide another take, another perspective, another voice on events of national consequence on their regional beats, and because they know the paper's home audience, they can best explain why those regional events matter to the home audience. With decisions like this, newspapers ingest more and more of their suicidal poison.
@TheBusinessGuy: There's ***maybe*** an argument toward focusing resources locally and in depth, instead of adding the showing baubles of thinly staffed regional buros that add a 30k feet national perspective to what's going on at the local level and, in theory, could be pretty much plugged in via wire. If wire didn't totally suck.
@If_I_Had_a_Poodle: True, but I would cut back on soft news resources--style sections and the like--before I would cut back on news. Of course, the soft news drives circ, so...Oh, hell, I can't solve this, either.
@TheBusinessGuy: you make the mistake of believing that the WaPo is interested in these other localities. I'm not that old, but during the time I considered myself an avid reader, it's has transformed rather convincingly into "a beltway paper." I think for a long time it was trying to compete on the same level as the NYT but it is firmly entrenched in the Insidery/Village of DC. And now that the Times is pretty much kaput, it really doesn't have to try that hard. Sadness.
@TheBusinessGuy: You would think that such a national perspective would be all the more important for the Post, given how its home audience is so heavily salted with readers whose decisions have such a profound effect on the life of the nation.
@If_I_Had_a_Poodle: Fair enough. As i see it, the business of government has largely become a rich man's game, geared towards their interests more than society's in general. And if the Post has narrowed its scope to match the likewise narrowed goals of the government, I'd say that's a pretty sad fucking thing.
Oh, how quaint. My local paper will finally live up to the title. It's a shame i can't look at the editorial page (hell, the entire paper) without wanting to rip it to shreds.
@wholenuther: Of course not. People don't read the Washington Post for news, they read it for a regurgitation of commentary they heard on the cable shout shows yesterday.
I only wonder how this will affect such stellar "liberal media" columnists and contributors like Kagan, Krauthammer, George Will, Broder et al. Novak is dead, but apparently still tapping out propaganda from his crypt. Pity the intern transcribing that!
Hardly matters, WaPo is such a Republican Beltway ratfuck, it's scarcely funny. Looking forward to the next Cheney op-ed, my owl's cage needs lining.
@MisterHippity: I'm not so sure...
Their breaking news machine has itself been broken for a while.
The biggest WaPo stories as of recent seem to be about their own screw-ups/dramas: Punchy guy and "let's sell access to employees"-gate. In my mind, the last really big story broken by the Post was the series on conditions at Walter Reed, way back in the salad days of 2007.
Now I'm not discounting everything they've done in recent years, but I don't think the WaPo is the breaking news powerhouse it once used to be.
As I hear the cheers and jeers, I am reminded, we are the same species that invented bear baiting. I expect this to be a mid-season replacement for Jay Leno later this year. #viralvideo
@iheartapocalypse: Is there some reason we're no longer a part of the natural world? Lions eat deer. Things eat other things. It's not our fault that that's pretty frikking awesome to watch. We're evolved creatures who used to be preyed on, of course we find it fascinating to watch.
Now quit yer bellyaching and just enjoy watching shark week, for christ's sake. #viralvideo
I'm a parent who has taken the kids to a lot of zoos.
Though I might watch it on YouTube, if I were to ever run across a lion eating a deer in real life, I'd most likely shuffle the kids to another exhibit and I really don't think I'd revert to baby talk.
Sure... circle of life, but that's why they made cable.
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Hardly matters, WaPo is such a Republican Beltway ratfuck, it's scarcely funny. Looking forward to the next Cheney op-ed, my owl's cage needs lining.
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They may get news from the rest of the U.S. elsewhere, but don't assume it'll be better. The post is one of the highest-quality news orgs out there.
This is really bad news all around.
11/24/09
Their breaking news machine has itself been broken for a while.
The biggest WaPo stories as of recent seem to be about their own screw-ups/dramas: Punchy guy and "let's sell access to employees"-gate. In my mind, the last really big story broken by the Post was the series on conditions at Walter Reed, way back in the salad days of 2007.
Now I'm not discounting everything they've done in recent years, but I don't think the WaPo is the breaking news powerhouse it once used to be.
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Now quit yer bellyaching and just enjoy watching shark week, for christ's sake. #viralvideo
11/09/09
Though I might watch it on YouTube, if I were to ever run across a lion eating a deer in real life, I'd most likely shuffle the kids to another exhibit and I really don't think I'd revert to baby talk.
Sure... circle of life, but that's why they made cable.